With temperature checks and no hugs, school will look different. Patience is advised.
Wake County parents are being asked to show patience when schools reopen next week under new COVID-19 rules requiring daily health screenings and temperature checks.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is requiring people to pass a series of health questions and to see if their body temperature is below 100.4 degrees to be allowed on K-12 public school campuses. Hundreds of students and school employees will have to be screened daily at individual schools.
“We have to try to get back into the swing of things, and we feel like since March we’ve been prepared very, very well to welcome the children back in a safe, supporting and loving environment,” Muriel Summers, principal of Combs Elementary School in Raleigh, told reporters on Monday. “So we just ask our parents to understand that things may take time and to also give us the same grace that they have shown us since March.”
The new screening requirement could especially have an impact on parents who drive their children to school. Parents are being asked to not leave the carpool lane until their child passes the screening. If the child fails, they’ll be sent home.
Students who fail the screening after they get off a school bus will be sent to the school’s care center, a room isolating them from other people, until their parents can come to take them home.
Students who walk to school will also need to answer the questions and pass the temperature check. Wake isn’t requiring it but prefers that walkers be accompanied by adults to school.
“This is just what we do now, and we’ll just continue to do it for as long as we have to,” said Heather Barnes, the receptionist at Combs, who was trained to be one of the school’s health screeners.
Barnes and Summers said they expect it will speed up once the students become more used to the process. Combs and many other Wake schools have used the new screening procedures for the past two months while serving as childcare sites for teachers who are leading the virtual classes being used in place of in-person learning.
Families at public schools and private schools that have already reopened for in-person classes are used to the screening process.
Students return to campus Oct. 26
Next week will mark a new phase for Wake when PreK-3 students and K-12 special-education students in regional programs return for in-person instruction. They will be on a cycle of one week of in-person classes and two weeks of remote classes, before switching to daily in-person classes on Nov. 16.
“I’m so glad to be back in the building because I know how exciting it is going to be to see the kids again and that’s going to be my favorite part,” Tiffany Norman a first-grade teacher at Combs, told reporters on Monday.
Middle school students will return to school Nov. 9 for a three-week rotation of in-person and online courses. Fourth- and fifth-grade students will begin on that rotation on Nov. 16.
High school students will continue to only receive online classes for the rest of the fall semester, which ends in January.
Virtual Academy students will continue to take their online classes. More than 85,000 of Wake’s 160,000 students are enrolled in the Virtual Academy.
Norman said she’ll have more of a personal connection now with her students than what she did teaching them virtually.
“There’s so many things you miss being online, just in terms of facial expressions, just in terms of physical behavior that you want to use to help a child if they’re going through something or if they’re trying to process something,” Norman said. “It’s so hard to do that virtually.”
Masks required for students
But Norman and Summers also warn that parents shouldn’t expect everything to return back to normal when in-person classes resume.
In addition to the daily health screenings and temperature checks, students and staff will be required to wear a face covering inside school buildings and on school buses. Aside from brief breaks, the masks will be worn for several hours a day.
Wake is encouraging families to get their children used to wearing face coverings now. Students who repeatedly refuse to wear face coverings might be denied in-person instruction and forced to only take online classes.
Norman went shopping for “fun” face masks for her son, Xavier, a second-grade student at Combs. He had on a Hot Wheels themed face mask on Monday.
No touching in schools
Social distancing is being stressed as part of the new school environment, with students expected to stay at their desks instead of moving around. Instead of group tables, students will sit at individual desks that are spaced several feet apart.
The physical contact that is so prevalent at schools, especially for younger children, is on hold for now.
“What I’m concerned about honestly is not being able to get close to them, not be able to hug them, not be able to hold their hand as they enter, high five them,” Summer said. “That’s the thing I’m most hesitant about not being able to do. But we’re going to figure out a way for them to feel our love regardless.”
Norman has been teaching her son how to play with his friends from a distance. This includes playing games such as tag without touching each other.
“That really helped him be at ease that he could still be with his friends even though he knows he needs to keep a safe distance,” Norman said.
This story was originally published October 19, 2020 at 11:56 AM with the headline "With temperature checks and no hugs, school will look different. Patience is advised.."
